Translating the first five verses of Genesis.

(1) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (2) Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (3) And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (4) God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (5) God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day. -Genesis 1:1-5

Unfortunately, I'm not fluent enough in another language to translate this material into a different language. However, I am able to read and interpret a translation in Korean:

창세기 1

1태초에 하나님이 천지를 창조하시니라
2땅이 혼돈하고 공허하며 흑암이 깊음 위에 있고 하나님의 신은 수면에 운행하시니라
3하나님이 가라사대 빛이 있으라 하시매 빛이 있었고
4그 빛이 하나님의 보시기에 좋았더라 하나님이 빛과 어두움을 나누사
5빛을 낮이라 칭하시고 어두움을 밤이라 칭하시니라 저녁이 되며 아침이 되니 이는 첫째 날이니라

The first thing to note about this translation is the tense of the text. The English NIV version uses a standard past tense to describe God's Creation. The Korean translation, however, uses a more complex tense that is known as present tense in the blunt style. The connotations of these two tenses are different. The blunt style embodies a more declarative tone, one that asserts authority and truth more so than a standard English past tense. In verse 3, the translation appropriately uses the honorific form of the verb "to say". After all, who could be more deserving of respect in a culture than God Himself? The language surrounding verse 4 is particularly interesting, because the translator uses the verb "나누다" - which means literally to share or divide amongst a group of people - rather than the verb "to separate." Therefore, the meaning is slightly different. Instead of simply saying that God separated darkness from light, the Korean passage suggests that the light was allocated differently, so that when no light was allocated, there was darkness. Finally, the last thing to note about this translation is that while the English version uses the word "God" repeatedly to emphasize the subject of each verse, the Korean uses "하나님" only twice. By combining the honorific tense with verbs that are only associated with high figures of authority, the subject is - in a sense - implied through the verb.